96 LETTER TO LANGTON. this sort of writing he by no means considered himself as speaking in propriâ personâ. This year, however, he must either have been very idle, or very busy with his long-promised Shakespeare; for scarcely any trace of his work during these months has been discovered. "TO BENNET LANGTON, ESQ., AT LANGTON, NEAR SPILSBY, LINCOLNSHIRE. "Oct. 18, 1760. "DEAR SIR, "You that travel about the world have more materials for letters than I, who stay at home; and should, therefore, write with frequency equal to your opportunities. I should be glad to have all England surveyed by you, if you would impart your observations in narratives as agreeable as your last. Knowledge is always to be wished to those who can communicate it well. While you have been riding and running, and seeing the tombs of the learned, and the camps of the valiant, I have only stayed at home, and intended to do great things, which I have not done. Beau [Beauclerk] went away to Cheshire, and has not yet found his way back. Chambers passed the vacation at Oxford. "I am very sincerely solicitous for the preservation or curing of Mr. Langton's sight, and am glad that the chirurgeon at Coventry gives him so much hope. Mr. Sharpe is of opinion that the tedious maturation of the cataract is a vulgar error, and that it may be removed as soon as it is formed. This notion deserves to be considered; I doubt whether it be universally true; but if it be true in some cases, and those cases can be distinguished, it may save a long and uncomfortable delay. "Of dear Mrs. Langton you give me no account; which is the less friendly, as you know how highly I think of her, and how much I interest myself in her health. I suppose you told her of my opinion, and likewise suppose it was not followed; however, I still believe it to be right. "Let me hear from you again, wherever you are, or whatever you are doing; whether you wander or sit still, plant trees or make Rustics, play with your sisters or muse alone; and in return I will LETTER TO LANGTON. 97 tell you the success of Sheridan, who at this instant is playing Cato, and has already played Richard twice. He had more company the second than the first night, and will make, I believe, a good figure on the whole, though his faults seem to be very many; some of natural deficience, and some of laborious affectation. He has, I think, no power of assuming either that dignity or elegance which some men, who have little of either in common life, can exhibit on the stage. His voice when strained is unpleasing, and when low is not always heard. He seems to think too much on the audience, and turns his face too often to the galleries. "However, I wish him well, and among other reasons, because I like his wife. "Make haste to write to, dear sir, "Your most affectionate servant, "SAM. JOHNSON." Notwithstanding our Author's constant self-reproaches on the score of idleness—as in the letter just quoted—“ I have only stayed at home, and intended to do great things, which I have not done". one feels that Johnson really did more than most of us, though we work fiercely from morning to night, and go over the ground at the rate of sixty miles an hour. Our haste to live and act is gene rating more heat than happiness, and more passion than steady progress. "Non omnia grandior ætas quæ fugiamus habet.” H 98 LETTERS. CHAPTER XI. LETTERS-JOHNSON A PENSIONER-BOSWELL INTRODUCED. (1760-1763.) BEFORE the end of this chapter we shall have been able to set before the reader some rare morsels of Johnson's conversation; but, in the meantime, one or two very interesting letters claim to be read, and a well-merited honour conferred upon our Author falls to be recorded. The year 1761 seems to have been one of the "idle" sort; for on Easter-eve we find the Doctor lamenting that his life" since last Easter" had been "dissipated and useless." But we know now how all such confessions from the lips of the good man are to be interpreted. The following letter is a model of dignity, politeness, delicacy, and sound sense. It was written to a lady who had solicited Johnson to use his influence with the Archbishop of Canterbury for the admission of her son to the University. "MADAM, "June 8, 1762. "I hope you will believe that my delay in answering your letter could proceed only from my unwillingness to destroy any hope that you had formed. Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords; but like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged, must end in disappointment. If it be asked what is the improper expectation which it is dangerous to indulge, experience will quickly answer, that it is such expectation as is dictated not by reason, but by desire; expectation raised, not by the common occurrences of life, but by the wants of the expectant; an expectation that requires the common course of things to be changed, and the general rules of action to be broken. "When you made your request to me, you should have considered, Madam, what you were asking. You asked me to solicit a great man, to whom I never spoke, for a young person whom I had never seen, upon a supposition which I had no means of knowing to be true. There is no reason why, amongst all the great, I should choose to supplicate the archbishop; nor why, among all the possible objects of his bounty, the archbishop should choose your son. I know, Madam, how unwillingly conviction is admitted, when interest opposes it; but surely, Madam, you must allow, that there is no reason why that should be done by me, which every other man may do with equal reason, and which, indeed, no man can do properly, without some very particular relation both to the archbishop and to you. If I could help you in this exigence by any proper means, it would give me pleasure; but this proposal is so very remote from usual methods, that I cannot comply with it, but at the risk of such answer and suspicions as I believe you do not wish me to undergo. "I have seen your son this morning; he seems a pretty youth, and will, perhaps, find some better friend than I can procure him; but though he should at last miss the University, he may still be wise, useful, and happy. "I am, Madam, your most humble servant, That is the letter of a perfect gentleman. “SIR, "TO MR. JOSEPH BARETTI, AT MILAN. "London, July 20, 1762. "However justly you may accuse me for want of punctuality in correspondence, I am not so far lost in negligence as to omit the opportunity of writing to you, which Mr. Beauclerk's passage through Milan affords me. "I suppose you received the 'Idlers,' and I intend that you shall soon receive Shakespeare, that you may explain his works to the ladies of Italy, and tell them the story of the editor, among the other strange narratives with which your long residence in this unknown region has supplied you. "As you have now been long away, I suppose your curiosity may pant for some news of your old friends. Miss Williams and I live much as we did. Miss Cotterel still continues to cling to Mrs. Porter, and Charlotte is now big of the fourth child. Mr. Reynolds gets six thousands a year. Mr. Chambers is gone this day, for the first time, the circuit with the judges. Mr. Richardson is dead of an apoplexy, and his second daughter has married a merchant. "My vanity, or my kindness, makes me flatter myself, that you would rather hear of me than of those whom I have mentioned; but of myself I have very little which I care to tell. Last winter I went down to my native town, where I found the streets much narrower and shorter than I thought I had left them, inhabited by a new race of people, to whom I was very little known. My playfellows were grown old, and forced me to suspect that I was no longer young. My only remaining friend has changed his principles, and was become the tool of the predominant faction. My daughter-in-law, from whom I expected most, and whom I met with sincere benevolence, has lost the beauty and gaiety of youth, without having gained much of the wisdom of age. I wandered about for five days, and took the first convenient opportunity of returning to a place, where, if there is not much happiness, there is, at least, such a diversity of good and evil, that slight vexations do not fix upon the heart. "I think in a few weeks to try another excursion; though to what end? Let me know, my Baretti, what has been the result of your return to your own country: whether time has made any alteration for the better, and whether, when the first raptures of salutation were over, you did not find your thoughts confessed their disappointment. "Moral sentences appear ostentatious and tumid, when they have no greater occasions than the journey of a wit to his own town yet such pleasures and such pains make up the general mass of life; and as nothing is little to him that feels it with great |